I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to wireless communication systems and more particularly relates to a method and apparatus for reducing messaging traffic by disabling the registration process in non-subscribed mobile telephones.
II. Description of the Related Art
In a cellular communication system, registration is the process a mobile station uses to notify a cellular communication system whether or not it is turned on and through which base station it is communicating. The mobile station may be of a cellular radiotelephone or personal communication device typically in the form of a vehicle mounted unit or a hand carried portable unit.
For calls directed to a mobile station, often called mobile terminated calls, the communication system must determine whether or not the mobile station is powered on and which base station the mobile station is receiving. To find the mobile station, the cellular system broadcasts a message, often called a page, from many base stations. If the mobile station responds, the cellular system continues handling the call with further communication being directed to the base station of the coverage area in which the mobile station is located. It should be further understood that the paging process is used to locate the mobile station for any other transactions to be done with the mobile station. The base station and its coverage area are commonly referred to as a cell.
If the system has no knowledge of the location of the mobile station, then the system must broadcast pages in every sector of every base station. As the amount of mobile terminated traffic increases, the communications resources to support system wide paging quickly becomes enormous in most large metropolitan areas.
For communications that are directed towards a mobile station, the cellular system uses the registration information to reduce the amount of paging needed to locate, activate, or establish a communication link with a mobile station. Registration information is also used to determine the set of base stations from which to broadcast a page signal.
Well known methods of registration in the art include registration at power up, and registration upon entering each new base station coverage area, among many others. Several communication systems, such as those of the Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) variety, use a periodic or counter method to determine the location of the mobile station. Although these methods are far from ideal, they nevertheless can significantly reduce the amount of required paging in a communication system. Registration procedures are similar among the various modulation schemes, including AMPS, TDMA, and CDMA. CDMA registration techniques are described in detail in Telecommunication Industry Association IS-95 and IS-95A, herein referred to as simply IS-95.
A mobile station may operate in one of several different states. For example, IS-95 describes an initialization state, an idle state, a system access state, and a traffic channel state. A mobile station operating in the idle state is generally required to register at regular intervals in order to notify the base station of its whereabouts. However, not all registrations are needed from all mobile stations. Specifically, registrations are not needed from mobile stations who are not currently subscribed to a communication system. These mobile stations are not authorized to operate in the system, yet, under current registration protocols, they are required to register in the same manner as mobile stations who are subscribed. With the ever increasing number of mobile stations being manufactured and placed on the market today, the number of mobile stations present in the system, but who are not actively subscribed, is becoming more and more prevalent. Thus, the number of needless registrations from such inactive mobile stations is beginning to generate an unacceptable amount of unnecessary registration traffic, negatively impacting system resources and network bandwidth.
Currently, mobile stations cannot detect whether their subscription is active or not. The registration process as defined today in cellular standards does not provide the capability of allowing a communication system operator to selectively disable the registration for inactive or non-subscribed mobile stations.
One solution to this problem is to simply disable the mobile station completely, until its subscription to the communication system is activated. There are several drawbacks to this approach. Chief among them is that the mobile station is not able to take advantage of Over-The-Air (OTA) programming, which is becoming a popular method to program mobile stations. In addition, other communications would not be possible if the mobile station was completely disabled. For example, an emergency call could not be completed. Service providers would ideally like a mobile station operator to be able to make this kind of call, even if the mobile station's subscription to the system is inactive. Furthermore, future regulations and standards will likely require this feature.
What is needed is a method and apparatus for selectively turning off the registration process for mobile stations which have either not yet been activated for service, or who have had service discontinued from them, while still allowing other communications to take place.